This one time we were at a party in this big deserted house at the end of our road. It was late, dark outside, we had lit the place with candles. I went to the kitchen I opened the fridge and THERE WAS NO BEER LEFT!

Still haven't read one that topped the spooky story posted by echo5juliet in the 2008 thread. Still gives me the creeps everytime I read it. For those who missed it the first time around or just want to experience it again, here it is:

I was driving a shortcut from Twentynine Palms, CA to Albuquerque, NM. Twentynine Palms is located in the desolate high desert east of LA. The shortcut was all two lane road through total nothingness, except for passing through Amboy, CA. Amboy is a nearly abandoned town nearly as far below sea level as Death Valley, with a dormant volcano and lava field on one side and a salt flat on the other. It was also, at the time, a hotspot for satanic group activity.

So I was driving by myself in the afternoon. I stopped in Amboy and snapped a picture of the city sign, just to prove I was there to friends who dared me to take that route to I-40. I got back in my car and proceeded to drive up into the mountain range between Amboy and I-40.

Once I reach the top I am driving north through a canyon with high grass on both sides of the road. Up ahead I see some stuff in the middle of the road. As I approach I slow down to see a red Pontiac Fiero stopped sideways across both lanes, a suitcase open with clothes scattered everywhere and two bodies laying face down in the road, a man and a woman.

I stop a hundred feet or so away and the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. Being a Marine, I reach under the seat and pull out a 9mm pistol and chamber a round. Something seemed very wrong, it looked too perfect as if it were staged. An ambush? Was I being paranoid? Something was just wrong. Getting out of the car seemed unthinkable, it was the horror movie move.

As I scanned the road I saw a line I could drive. Pass the guy in the road on his left, swerve to the right side of the woman, behind the Fiero and I'd be on the other side. I dropped it into first gear, punched it and drove the line I planned.

I passed the back of the Fierro without hitting it or either of the bodies in the road. I continued forward a couple hundred feet and slowed down so I could breathe and let my heart slow down. As I looked up into the rearview mirror I saw that the two bodies had gotten up to their knees and twenty or so people emerged from the tall grass on either side of the road by the car and bodies.

At that moment my right foot smashed the gas pedal to the floor and did not let up until I had to slowdown for the I-40 east onramp.

I will never know what would have happened to me had I gotten out of the car to check on the bodies or stopped my car closer to them. Somehow I do not think it would have been good. Sometimes real life can be scarier than a movie.

A few years ago, I was playing in a band and we slept in a reportedly haunted music hall. (It was a benefit show in a small town, the proprietor let us spend the night there free.) My bandmates all went to bed before midnight, but I spent the night wandering the streets aimlessly. When I returned, they were all sleeping, and had been sleeping for several hours. I think it was around 3:30 AM when I finally knocked off.

Sometime around daybreak, I heard what sounds like a band setting up - carts hauling around, bleachers being pulled out, things like that. Nothing really electrical, more nondescript, like heavy objects being dragged across the floor. I assumed it was my bandmates shuffling around, and after just four hours of sleep I wanted no part of it, so I pulled the pillow over my head and tried to sleep more. Eventually the noise subsided.

When I eventually woke up for real, I found that my bandmates had all slept in too. Nobody had woken up yet. Nobody else heard the noise I heard. We were in there alone.

Happy Halloween from Down Under. The story I have is not mine, but belongs to a guy I know here.

At the mouth of the Swan River, just southwest of Perth, Western Australia, lies Fremantle. It's a somewhat touristy, somewhat bohemian enclave; it's been Perth's port since the 1830s. Before European settlement, for 40,000 years or so, Fremantle was a river crossing considered sacred by the Whadjuk group of Nyungar Aborigines. In addition to being Perth's port, Fremantle was, between 1850 and 1991, the home to Western Australia's largest jail: Fremantle Prison. It's now a tourist attraction, where you can go on night tours and they'll have some cheap scares, like actors dressing up as crazed prisoners. Other notable sites in the prison include a window which supposedly contains an image of Martha Rendell (the only woman to be hanged in WA) and the gallows where Perth serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, the "Night Caller" was hanged on in 1964 (he was the last person hanged in WA; interestingly, he was buried in the same grave as Rendell). Freo Jail has a long, dark history.

Anyway, this guy I know is responsible for shepherding groups of foreigners around the Perth area and one of the most common places he'll take people to is Fremantle Prison. He's been maybe 10 or 12 times. A few years ago, he began having dreams, dreams which haunted him. He and his family lived in an old house (early 20th century---a lot of Perth's not that old). Soon, things started getting weird at the house: strange noises in the night mainly. It turns out that his family were also having dreams as well. It perturbed him, perhaps because he lacked any explanation. One day, he was chatting with a friend of his, an Aborigine. When he told his friend about the strange things going on at his house, the friend asked, out of the blue, if his family were having strange dreams. In the Australian Aboriginal culture, dreams are sort of like messages, they are something to be taken seriously. The Aboriginal man then explained: Fremantle Prison is haunted, quite possibly one of the most haunted places in WA. This guy I know had visited it many times. According to the Aboriginal man, the ghosts were recognizing him, and were following him home, thinking he was one of them. The Aboriginal gentleman then warned him: "you must not go back to Fremantle Prison, unless you wish for the ghosts to follow you around permanently."

To this day, he refuses to go inside the prison itself (he'll lead groups in to the courtyard, but he won't take the tour). And this story is his explanation. That, or he got tired of the same tour year, after year, after year...

Bathia_Mapes:Still haven't read one that topped the spooky story posted by echo5juliet in the 2008 thread. Still gives me the creeps everytime I read it. For those who missed it the first time around or just want to experience it again, here it is:

I was driving a shortcut from Twentynine Palms, CA to Albuquerque, NM. Twentynine Palms is located in the desolate high desert east of LA. The shortcut was all two lane road through total nothingness, except for passing through Amboy, CA. Amboy is a nearly abandoned town nearly as far below sea level as Death Valley, with a dormant volcano and lava field on one side and a salt flat on the other. It was also, at the time, a hotspot for satanic group activity.

So I was driving by myself in the afternoon. I stopped in Amboy and snapped a picture of the city sign, just to prove I was there to friends who dared me to take that route to I-40. I got back in my car and proceeded to drive up into the mountain range between Amboy and I-40.

Once I reach the top I am driving north through a canyon with high grass on both sides of the road. Up ahead I see some stuff in the middle of the road. As I approach I slow down to see a red Pontiac Fiero stopped sideways across both lanes, a suitcase open with clothes scattered everywhere and two bodies laying face down in the road, a man and a woman.

I stop a hundred feet or so away and the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. Being a Marine, I reach under the seat and pull out a 9mm pistol and chamber a round. Something seemed very wrong, it looked too perfect as if it were staged. An ambush? Was I being paranoid? Something was just wrong. Getting out of the car seemed unthinkable, it was the horror movie move.

As I scanned the road I saw a line I could drive. Pass the guy in the road on his left, swerve to the right side of the woman, behind the Fiero and I'd be on the other side. I dropped it into first gear, punched it and drove the line I planned.

I passed the back of the Fierro without ...

If you think it was scary reading it, you should have been sitting in the drivers seat... ;)

once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404. *cries*, scary....

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token."Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,>From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

echo5juliet:Bathia_Mapes: Still haven't read one that topped the spooky story posted by echo5juliet in the 2008 thread. Still gives me the creeps everytime I read it. For those who missed it the first time around or just want to experience it again, here it is:

I was driving a shortcut from Twentynine Palms, CA to Albuquerque, NM. Twentynine Palms is located in the desolate high desert east of LA. The shortcut was all two lane road through total nothingness, except for passing through Amboy, CA. Amboy is a nearly abandoned town nearly as far below sea level as Death Valley, with a dormant volcano and lava field on one side and a salt flat on the other. It was also, at the time, a hotspot for satanic group activity.

So I was driving by myself in the afternoon. I stopped in Amboy and snapped a picture of the city sign, just to prove I was there to friends who dared me to take that route to I-40. I got back in my car and proceeded to drive up into the mountain range between Amboy and I-40.

Once I reach the top I am driving north through a canyon with high grass on both sides of the road. Up ahead I see some stuff in the middle of the road. As I approach I slow down to see a red Pontiac Fiero stopped sideways across both lanes, a suitcase open with clothes scattered everywhere and two bodies laying face down in the road, a man and a woman.

I stop a hundred feet or so away and the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. Being a Marine, I reach under the seat and pull out a 9mm pistol and chamber a round. Something seemed very wrong, it looked too perfect as if it were staged. An ambush? Was I being paranoid? Something was just wrong. Getting out of the car seemed unthinkable, it was the horror movie move.

As I scanned the road I saw a line I could drive. Pass the guy in the road on his left, swerve to the right side of the woman, behind the Fiero and I'd be on the other side. I dropped it into first gear, punched it and drove the line I planned.

When I was in middle school I moved into a new house and when I went to bed I heard a tapping on the wall right above my head. I tried to think of what it could be as I stayed there silently freaking out. I thought that it would be a one time thing but then it happened the next night and the next. Eventually I moved my bed but the tapping happened again in the new location right above my head. It was very loud so I could hear it wherever .. it wasn't a noise that I could only near next to the wall. I moved my bed a third time and it happened again. One night I woke up because I felt a finger tap the top of my head. After a while though I stopped being afraid because I was just so annoyed. I tapped back and then just slept through it without saying up worrying. It went away after that.

This ones a little long but I first read it in one of the previous Fark years Halloween threads and really liked it.

----------------

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month.The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II.

Everything was fine for the first five days; the subjects hardly complained having been promised (falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents in their past, and the general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the 4 day mark.After five days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored portholes. Oddly they all seemed to think they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over their comrades, the other subjects in captivity with them. At first the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself...After nine days the first of them started screaming. He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it... or rather didn't react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The 2 non-screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the glass portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.

So did the whispering to the microphones.

After 3 more days passed. The researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working, since they thought it impossible that no sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all 5 must still be alive. In fact it was the amount of oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy level of strenuous exercise. On the morning of the 14th day the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the captives they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.

They announced: "We are opening the chamber to test the microphones step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom."

To their surprise they heard a single phrase in a calm voice response: "We no longer want to be freed."

Debate broke out among the researchers and the military forces funding the research. Unable to provoke any more response using the intercom it was finally decided to open the chamber at midnight on the fifteenth day.

The chamber was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with fresh air and immediately voices from the microphones began to object. 3 different voices began begging, as if pleading for the life of loved ones to turn the gas back on. The chamber was opened and soldiers sent in to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, and so did the soldiers when they saw what was inside. Four of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that any of them in 'life.'

The food rations past day 5 had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject's thighs and chest stuffed into the drain in the center of the chamber, blocking the drain and allowing 4 inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All four 'surviving' test subjects also had large portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and exposed bone on their finger tips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the position and angles of the wounds indicated that most if not all of them were self-inflicted.

The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.

Most of the soldiers were Russian special operatives at the facility, but still many refused to return to the chamber to remove the test subjects. They continued to scream to be left in the chamber and alternately begged and demanded that the gas be turned back on, lest they fall asleep...

To everyone's surprise the test subjects put up a fierce fight in the process of being removed from the chamber. One of the Russian soldiers died from having his throat ripped out, another was gravely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subject's teeth. Another 5 of the soldiers lost their lives if you count ones that committed suicide in the weeks following the incident.

In the struggle one of the four living subjects had his spleen ruptured and he bled out almost immediately. The medical researchers attempted to sedate him but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal, breaking the ribs and arm of one doctor. When heart was seen to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out to the point there was more air in his vascular system than blood. Even after it stopped he continued to scream and flail for another 3 minutes, struggling to attack anyone in reach and just repeating the word "MORE" over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.

The surviving three test subjects were heavily restrained and moved to a medical facility, the two with intact vocal cords continuously begging for the gas demanding to be kept awake...

The most injured of the three was taken to the only surgical operating room that the facility had. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back within his body it was found that he was effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under. He managed to tear most of the way through a 4 inch wide leather strap on one wrist, even through the weight of a 200 pound soldier holding that wrist as well. It took only a little more anesthetic than normal to put him under, and the instant his eyelids fluttered and closed, his heart stopped. In the autopsy of the test subject that died on the operating table it was found that his blood had triple the normal level of oxygen. His muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn and he had broken 9 bones in his struggle to not be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.

The second survivor had been the first of the group of five to start screaming. His vocal cords destroyed he was unable to beg or object to surgery, and he only reacted by shaking his head violently in disapproval when the anesthetic gas was brought near him. He shook his head yes when someone suggested, reluctantly, they try the surgery without anesthetic, and did not react for the entire 6 hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with what remained of his skin. The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should be medically possible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified nurse assisting the surgery stated that she had seen the patients mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his eyes met hers.

When the surgery ended the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while struggling. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the surgeon had a pen and pad fetched so the patient could write his message. It was simple. "Keep cutting."

The other two test subjects were given the same surgery, both without anesthetic as well. Although they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralyzed the subjects could only follow the attending researchers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they were soon trying to escape their bonds. The moment they could speak they were again asking for the stimulant gas. The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts and why they wanted to be given the gas again.

Only one response was given: "I must remain awake."

All three subject's restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination as to what should be done with them. The researchers, facing the wrath of their military 'benefactors' for having failed the stated goals of their project considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The commanding officer, an ex-KGB instead saw potential, and wanted to see what would happen if they were put back on the gas. The researchers strongly objected, but were overruled.

In preparation for being sealed in the chamber again the subjects were connected to an EEG monitor and had their restraints padded for long term confinement. To everyone's surprise all three stopped struggling the moment it was let slip that they were going back on the gas. It was obvious that at this point all three were putting up a great struggle to stay awake. One of subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs against the leather bonds with all his might, first left, then right, then left again for something to focus on. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to be wired for EEG most of the researchers were monitoring his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes flat lined inexplicably. It looked as if he were repeatedly suffering brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on paper scrolling out of the brainwave monitor only one nurse saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brainwaves immediately changed to that of deep sleep, then flatlined for the last time as his heart simultaneously stopped.

The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brainwaves showed the same flatlines as one who had just died from falling asleep. The commander gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside, as well as 3 researchers. One of the named three immediately drew his gun and shot the commander point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute subject and blew his brains out as well.

He pointed his gun at the remaining subject, still restrained to a bed as the remaining members of the medical and research team fled the room. "I won't be locked in here with these things! Not with you!" he screamed at the man strapped to the table. "WHAT ARE YOU?" he demanded. "I must know!"

The subject smiled.

"Have you forgotten so easily?" The subject asked. "We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread."

The researcher paused. Then aimed at the subject's heart and fired. The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out, "So... nearly... free..."

For those of you who can get 640 AM KFI radio, tomorrow night, starting at 10pm, is Coast to Coast with George Nory (the old Art Bell show). Except it isn't Coast to Coast.... it is Ghost to Ghost for this one night. Callers call in ghost stories, all night long. Turn down the lights, burn a blunt or two, grab a bag of candy and enjoy.....

Apparently, a lot of people had experiences there. I never really did, however, I am a skeptic.

So, lets start.

The earliest I remember was me, my friend, and my mother were all sitting in the living room watching TV. All of a sudden, my friend and my mother looked at each other and asked if they saw that...Apparently, they both saw wavy white lines floating up the stairs. I was at an angle in the living room where I couldn't see the stairs.

One day, my GF and I were in my room, and my room was in the attic. I heard my mother calling me from downstairs, so I went out the door of my room, and turned right down the hallway towards the top of the attic stairs to answer my mother. At which point I heard my GF scream. I walked back to the room, and she swore that she saw someone walking towards left in the hallway, the opposite of the way I had just gone. She described it as solid, and wearing a colored shirt. I, being in the hallway, saw nothing, or heard nothing.

My sister for a short period, also had a room in the attic. There were three rooms there. Anyways,my sister had a habit of sleeping with her radio on, and I used to go and shut it off, cause it would keep me up. I was sleeping at a friends house the night in question. She says she was awake, with the lights off, listening to the radio. All of a sudden the stations started chaning, she assumed it was me, trying to shut the radio off, so she sits up and says "I'm still awake, leave it on" Except, I am not there. She says what was there was a small boy, dressed in a tuxedo, standing at the end of her bed. She screamed bloody murder, so badly, that my other brother downstairs heard the screams screamed up to her to her what was wrong. She says she was so scared that she pulled the covers over her head. My brother didnt hear any response, so he went back to sleep. She says she waited 10 minutes, and then looked again, except now the boy was standing directly next to her at the bed. Apparently she screamed so loud that my brother ran upstairs, turing on the hallway light in the attic on his way up. She says instantly when the lights came on, the boy disappeared.

There are lots more, I can go on, but it's late, and I may stop in again.

Oh, let me add this:in 32004, the house was sold to my brother. He gut-renovated it, and when the pulled up the landing at the bottom of the stairs (where the white lights emanated form) they found an old straw hat, from 1895, and a shoe. Also from the same era.

A little weird, but apparently, it was good luck to plank a shoe in a house you were building, or something like that.

So I was in the U.S. Army in my younger years, and my first duty station was Fort Irwin, California, aka the National Training Center, located smack dab in the middle of Mojave Desert ("30 miles from water, 3 feet from hell"). Nowadays they do these elaborate urban pacification exercises in full-blown "Arab" villages built in the desert there, but back then we were still doing brigade-sized force on force training...in layman's terms, we tore through the desert playing laser tag, only instead of little plastic guns we used assault rifles, machine guns, tanks, helicopters, and even jets. Every month they'd bring in a different unit from some other base in the U.S. and we'd roll out and "kill" them repeatedly in the hopes that they'd learn how not to die when people were shooting real rounds at them.

My job was in intelligence, which primarily consisted of listening in on the visiting unit's communications during the exercises. On one night, one of our teams was monitoring a radio frequency and heard one unit reporting back to their field headquarters:

Dispatched team: Hey, uh, base...look, I know this is going to sound weird and, uh, I don't want to be that guy, but...we're being followed by some kind of light in the sky and we have no idea what it is.Base: Say again?Team: It's just a light in the sky, it's been following us for a couple minutes now. I don't want to say "UFO", but...Base: Is it moving? It might just be one of the radio repeater towers on the hills.Team: Negative base, it is moving. It is not a helicopter and it's not any kind of aircraft any of us has seen before.Base: Send your position, please.Team: [sends encrypted grid coordinates] This is really freaking us out, base.Base: Stand by.

About ten minutes later our crew picked up another transmission on that network:Team: Base, it's back again.

And that was the last they heard from that unit. Their field HQ tried to raise them repeatedly for the rest of the night but never got an answer. We sent the report up the chain as a potential "real world incident", but never heard back on that, either. 100% true, I was there.

We had a filming crew for the story of Midas and Judas and Pat. The day started out right for our scene taking place at a cabin near a pond just north of Poughkeepsie NY. The scene involved the lovers triangle being found out, and instead of them being pissed off, Midas and Judas compete for the love of Pat. Judas declares his love by throwing 30 pieces of silver into the pond. Midas corresponds by turning the pond into gold. Pat responds by making them wonder if they are gay or not. Just then a ghost came up and bit Pat's privy parts off. It has haunted every one since.

Just Another OC Homeless Guy:For those of you who can get 640 AM KFI radio, tomorrow night, starting at 10pm, is Coast to Coast with George Nory (the old Art Bell show). Except it isn't Coast to Coast.... it is Ghost to Ghost for this one night. Callers call in ghost stories, all night long. Turn down the lights, burn a blunt or two, grab a bag of candy and enjoy.....

I was 15 years old and it was the first summer where my parents decided to take a weeklong vacation to visit my grandmother. This was great for me for two reasons, the first, I was allowed to stay home alone for the week, and the second, my mother had left me a 4 gallon tub of bubblegum ice-cream that she had told me to go wild on.I stayed awake every night late, watching Japanese anime, drinking root-beer and eating the heck out of that bubble gum ice cream. I was in 15 year old boy Heaven.On the second to last night of the week everything was going the same. It was three o clock in the morning when I finally finished the last episode of "bubblegum crisis" (which I'd loved watching while eating bubblegum ice-cream) and decided it was time to go downstairs to bed.So I did.I'm not sure what time it was when I woke up, my room was dark, I was laying in bed facing my wall and I could tell that if I didn't get out of bed my bladder was going to burst.As I started to turn over in my bed so that I could climb out, something happened that to this day (34 years old now) I'll never forget.From right beside my head, almost like a breath away from my ear I heard as clear as day a voice. The voice was strange though because it was devoid of all inflection, all tone, all emotion. It only spoke three words to me..."Don't turn around"That was it, nothing more, nothing less. But I didn't question that voice. It was so clear, so close to my head and so flat and inhuman in its substance that held my bladder and did not turn around to get out of bed until I could see the second rays of sunlight peaking through my curtain the next morning.Just... "Don't turn around."

About 10 years ago my gf and I went on a road trip from Florida to Philly, and on the way back we decides to take a byway through the Apalachians. We went west from Philly through Harrisburg, then went south through West Virginia. We stopped for the night off some exit in WV, and ended up getting a room at a Knight's Inn. Our room was on the back side of the motel. When I pulled up to the room, there were like 5 hillbilly type guys sitting in old lawn chairs in a parking space next to what I think was a logging tuck. As far as I could tell we were the only two groups at the motel, me and my gf and the logger guys.

Anyway, we walk into the room and get a silent state-down from the hillbillies. We settled in, took showers, and were about to go eat when the phone rang. My gf answered, talked for a minute, then hung up. It was the motel clerk, and asked to move my car to the other side of the motel because they were paving that side in the morning.

So I go to move my car, and as I walk outside, I see the hillbilly guys are gone, and what was really creepy is that I saw one of them peeking peeking out of their window. Anyway, after I got in my car I realized I didn't know.where exactly to move it to, so I went back in the room and called the clerk back. "Hey uh, this is room 22, you just called and asked me to move the car, but where did you want me to move it? Over by check-in?" "Sorry sir, I don't follow. No one from the front desk called." "My girlfriend just spoke to someone, they asked me to move because you were paving the parking lot tomorrow." "Hold on."- a few seconds go by. "Sir, we're not paving the parking lot, and no one here called you. The only phone activity has been from... 21, right next door to you. Their line was lit about 10 minutes ago."Click. That was enough for me. I grabbed our shiat and we got the fark out of there. I think we ended up staying in a busy Comfort Inn somewhere in Virginia.

sethen320:echo5juliet: Bathia_Mapes: Still haven't read one that topped the spooky story posted by echo5juliet in the 2008 thread. Still gives me the creeps everytime I read it. For those who missed it the first time around or just want to experience it again, here it is:

I was driving a shortcut from Twentynine Palms, CA to Albuquerque, NM. Twentynine Palms is located in the desolate high desert east of LA. The shortcut was all two lane road through total nothingness, except for passing through Amboy, CA. Amboy is a nearly abandoned town nearly as far below sea level as Death Valley, with a dormant volcano and lava field on one side and a salt flat on the other. It was also, at the time, a hotspot for satanic group activity.

So I was driving by myself in the afternoon. I stopped in Amboy and snapped a picture of the city sign, just to prove I was there to friends who dared me to take that route to I-40. I got back in my car and proceeded to drive up into the mountain range between Amboy and I-40.

Once I reach the top I am driving north through a canyon with high grass on both sides of the road. Up ahead I see some stuff in the middle of the road. As I approach I slow down to see a red Pontiac Fiero stopped sideways across both lanes, a suitcase open with clothes scattered everywhere and two bodies laying face down in the road, a man and a woman.

I stop a hundred feet or so away and the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. Being a Marine, I reach under the seat and pull out a 9mm pistol and chamber a round. Something seemed very wrong, it looked too perfect as if it were staged. An ambush? Was I being paranoid? Something was just wrong. Getting out of the car seemed unthinkable, it was the horror movie move.

As I scanned the road I saw a line I could drive. Pass the guy in the road on his left, swerve to the right side of the woman, behind the Fiero and I'd be on the other side. I dropped it into first gear, punched it and drove the line I planned.

I passed the ...

I'm not sure which is the original story but I heard this one about 5 or 6 years ago except it was a doctor on some back roads and instead of "tall grass" on each side of the road there was just a mountain that the people emerged from.

Other than the real news, this was my favorite scary story this year. "THEY" LIVE IN THE DESERT by WESTON OCHSE" This was on my local Public Radio Station last week. I thought it rather creepy. Here is link Link(You'll have to scroll to his "They Live in the Desert" spot on the page. It is a taping of the show so could not get https://radio.azpm.org/p/azspot/2012/10/25/17719-the-5th-annual-haunte d-halloween-arizona-spotlight/ direct link to the story.) It is worth it.

There's an old hot-springs bath house in the town I grew up in called the Chimes. It's no longer in business, but when I was a kid it sold junk under the guise of 'antiques.'. We were restoring a 100 year old Victorian house and would often go there to find original hardware pieces. The house itself had a phantom dog we would see out of the corner of our eyes or hear growling, and one of the pieces of furniture my mother bought also had a ghost attached... but the antique store itself was haunted.

I was only 8 or 9 but I remember having a nice chat with a man in a brown suit in the Clock Room, He was in his 50s or 60s and wore something out of an earlier era. He was very nice and friendly, and looked perfectly normal. It wasn't until I read a news article later that I realized he wasn't alive.

On the alternate end of the spectrum, there was a hallway off the main building which led to the hot-springs baths. Something didn't like me being there. On some occasions I couldn't even enter the hallway. On others, I could only go so far in before it felt like something was pushing me out. I had this intense impression of something being angry with me. Once I made it all the way into the 'doctor's room' and there was the sensation that the angry being was watching me. It looked like a black mass, which my mind translated to a gargoyle. It was perching up in a corner of the room glaring at me with intense hatred. I got out of there quickly.

I took a friend along once and she had the exact same sensations I had, without my ever telling her what I had experienced. And based on this article, I wasn't alone. Ghosts of the Chimes

Not a tall tale...my one actual "ghost story". In fact, until this happened I always thought people with stories were full of sh*t.

Back in 2006 or 2007 I was travelling between New Orleans (actually Belle Chasse) and home a lot. Like several times per month. I was staying at a small bed and breakfast out there which I loved. They treat you like a king. The food was good, the people were nice, and the location was perfect for hat I was doing. It was in the middle of nowhere, but it was VERY close to where I needed to be every day. The place was called Woodland Plantation. It's an old plantation home which is the one shown on bottles of Southern Comfort (which is the WORST hangover possible).

I had been out there a bunch and they have about 6 or 7 rooms, all themed differently and named accordingly. At the time they only had TV's in about 3 rooms. Because I wasn't there for the hunting, fishing, or scenery, I would take my PS2 out with me for entertainment at night. One week I arrived and asked if I could switch rooms because they had put me up in a room with no TV. I ended up being put in a very nice suite with a TV called "The Captains Quarters". I had stayed in many of the rooms and a lot of the time I was the ONLY guest in the old house. It made rickety noises when the wind blew and all of the furniture and the old paintings made it extra creepy (they had those old paintings where the people actually appear to be looking at you). Still, I would sit in the parlor downstairs reading a book or out by the river on the deck, just happy to have such a massive house to myself. Every now and then I would think "this is a very oldhouse, and there have probably been a few funerals held right in this room", it would make me shiver, then I would go back to what I was doing.

Anyhow, one night (my last night there) I was sleeping and out of nowhere, unrelated to whatever I was dreaming I heard someone scream in my ear "WAKE UP!!!!". I jumped straight up out of bed in the dark room and thought there was a fire. Surely someone just woke me up to get out. Nothing. Dark room, not a single person. I even made the stupid mistake of leaning over to check beside the bed...nothing. Ithought "ok, that was a strange dream, I have about 2 hours left before the alarm, make the most of it" and laid back down. As I was drifting off I felt the VERY distinct feeling of a hand on my head and it shoved me, as if to make sure I didn't fall asleep (my skin still crawls to this day when I talk about this, as it's doing now). At that point any illusion of going back to sleep was gone. I got up, turned on EVERY light in the room, got ready, and left for work. I sat in my car until the place opened.

I was due to go home after that day but I was dreading going back in that room to get my stuff. I reasoned with myself that it must have been a bad dream. Anyhow I ended up working late and I hated driving at night due to the fact that I had vertigo. I decided to stay one more night and stop being such a pansy, I could just leave in the morning. I sat in the bar and drank for a while and finally the owner asks me why I havent turned in. I wasnt comfortable telling him the whole story so I just said I had a rough night in the room because I got creeped out. The cook who was there at the time asks "What did you hear?". When I laughed it off they began to argue with him telling her that she needs to stop telling people about the place being haunted. They actually got into a heated argument where I learned that she refuses to set foot in the house (the restaurant/bar is an old church which was trucked in...yes drinking in an old church was awesome) and he is getting sick of her stories.

Anyhow I did not go back to that room that night. The next day I darted through the house, collected my belongings, and drove home with my first ever Southern Comfort hangover...that was the real horror.

After I returned I had a friend who used to travel out there and he askked me one day how my trip went. I told him all of the ususal nice things and then asked if he had ever felt creeped out by the house. He said "Please tell me you didn't stay in the Captains Quarters". Realizing I had never told him what room I was in I felt pretty freaked out. Apparently he refused to stay in that room because he had a hard time sleeping at night...he said that there was the constant sound of children laughing and playing all night. Sometimes it sounded like they were trying to play tricks on him. He said for the longest time he could never figure out why the families with the kids weren't there during the day. Eventually he was in his room reading a book and a little girl walked up to his bed. He said he freaked out and told her she needed to leave. She laughed and disappeared.

Normally I would call BS, except he knew EXACTLY which room I was in before I ever said anything.

That's my excessively long ghost story. All true. I can't prove it, but I can say that I've travelled back that way several times since, and I will never stay there again.

When I was in High School there was this house in the old part of town that was about 100 years old or so, in California this is pretty old for a house. Anyway this crazy older lady lived there and sometimes during the evenings after it got dark she would sit on her porch with like a white bathrobe or towel over her head like a hood, totally obscuring her face. Well being stupid High School kids we would drive up and yell at her. She would jump up and start racing towards our car from about 20 yards up the walkway, scrawny arms stretched out, fingers ready to grab or scratch whatever came in reach and just shrieking. So it became a game or a test to see how close you would let her get before you hit the gas and got away. It made the girls scream and gave us an adrenaline rush because the lady, the house and the situation was just so spooky.

After a month of this going on the school newspaper got wind of this and they went during the day and knocked on this ladies door to "get to bottom of the story". Low and behold her middle aged son was there and he was very upset that kids were doing this and that really she was a nice person who would hurt anyone even though she would run shrieking towards your car. The kid doing the interview then wanted to talk to the old lady and the man basically said "Oh no she isn't here, after the second week of this harassment she had to be put into a facility for her own protection, and I have been staying here to take car of the house alone now for about a week."

When we heard that we about wet our pants. We had been driving to that houses curb to see the crazy lady in white for about a month including that very weekend but the son said after the second week she was in a facility. So who was the lady in white chasing down our car the last couple of times we did that?

Seriously after that I never messed with old people or went by that house after dark again.

I was about 18, a girl I knew in college introduced me to Ouija board one night, it was your store-bought parker bros. version...we played with it, it wasn't that weird because everyone was suspicious of each other about who was moving the planchette. Just a TOY I thought...but interesting at the least. Maybe even a little spooky.

I did a little reading and found out that if you make your own, it's more powerful, better connection to the spirit world, blah blah blah, I wasn't taking this thing seriously, but I was excited by the creepy factor, and how many other people DID take it seriously.

So, one night in October (couple of weeks before Halloween) I called an old girlfriend, "Jenny", and we got to talking (We were reduced to good friends at the time. She was dating some guy named "Patrick" and I had other girls on my mind). We were both a bit bored, so I invited her over. I was living in the apartment above my parents garage, it wasn't much, but it was my "own" place. I told her about my new found knowledge and said I'd make a ouija board to keep us entertained. She was reluctant, but I assured her it was "just a toy" and parker brothers makes these things. "Nothing to worry about, it can't hurt you, it'll be fun"

She had a 20 mile span to cover so I had some time. The board was easy to make, just a piece of 18" x 24" drywall, and I drew the letters and symbols on it with a sharpie. To make the planchette I cut a corner off a pine board and drilled a hole in the middle. Oila~ we had board and were ready to contact Elvis.

A couple of things i told her that I read about these things...(from the box in the store or a movie, I don't know.)

Don't take your hands off the board once you've started. If you do, you could open a "door"Don't stop the "session" without saying "goodbye", if you do, you could open a "door"Spirits Lie, can't spell, don't use it alone, and don't burn it near your house.

Now, on to the fun stuff...we sit down across from each other, with this thing on our knees.I don't remember the name of the first "spirit" we got from the afterlife, but we asked it the usual questions:"Are you dead?"Yes"Can you see us?"Yes"I just tossed a thesaurus over my shoulder, it landed open...what page is open to?"1..3..4 (I get up and check the book, Ouija spirit is.....Correct)"Where are you?"H..E..L..L"Oh really? Is there anyone there we know?"Yes (Yes was written on the board in the corner, opposite "No")"Who is there that we know?"U..N..C..L..E

At this point Jenny stops and gets a little weirded out. Turns out she had an uncle who committed suicide. (I found this out that night. One of those family secrets.) We put the board down, and I reassure her that "it's just a toy", and it's our subconcsious minds moving this thing around. We smoke a cig or two and decide to try again.

This time we get some other "spirit", also in "Hell", and I ask:"Is there anyone there I know?"Yes"Who is it?"D..A..R..R..E..N (This is the older brother I had lost 4 years earlier in an accident)

I get a little miffed at this thing, because my brother was a teenager and a good kid before he passed, he was a hero of sorts to me, and there was no way in my mind he would be in Hell.

I press on, because this thing is bullshiat to me at this point."Oh really...well then...If he's there I want to talk to him! Is he there?"Yes"Ok, 'Darren', you and I shared a room when I was in 6th grade and you were in 7th...you were in love with a girl, and wrote her name on the wall behind your bed, and only I knew it was there...what was the name you wrote?"K..A..R..A

I dropped the board. Nobody but me and Darren knew that...and he never dated her, so it wasn't public knowledge...she was his dream girl and he passed on before anything developed.Jenny is a little concerned at this point, and once again I tell her that this stupid thing is just a TOY, and my subconcious mind is playing tricks on us. We took another break, another cigarette or two, and decide to give it another shot.

We get the third "spirit"..."Who are you?"

S..A..T..A

shiat!!!! I panic and drop the board...Santa Claus doesn't spell his name that way! BREAK TIME!

Jenny is pretty rattled at this point, and says "I don't want to play with this 'Toy' anymore." I agreed and we decided to say "goodbye" to the "spirits" and be done with it."

We decide that this is going to be the last communication no matter who we get.

"Who are you?"S..A..T..A (i cringe at this point) ..R ....SATAR

"Well, SATAR, we'd like to go now, so 'goodbye'"NO"We need to go. Goodbye"NO YOU...R"What is YOU R?"YOU..R..W..R..O..N..G"Who is wrong?"J-E-N-N-Y (I was glad it wasn't talking to me)"What is Jenny wrong about?"YOU..R..W..R..O..N..G(We are irritated and creeped out at this point, and practically shouting at this thing.)"WHAT IS SHE WRONG ABOUT?!"YOU..R..W..R..O..N..G"ABOUT WHAT?!?!?!"

T....O....Y....S

It took a split second for that to grab me...then it did. You know that rush of adrenaline you get when you have a close call? The way it rushes up your spine like a wave hits you in the back? This felt like a tidal wave to me. I freaked out. The board went flying, I grabbed Jenny by the arm and it took me about 3 steps to get to the door 15 feet away. We dashed down the stairs and into the house 50 feet away. She was crying at this point and I was VERY rattled, I felt like the devil himself was standing behind me.

We spent at least an hour in the house trying to calm down, and trying to figure out what to do...that WAS my apartment, but I wasn't going up there alone, and that board had to go. Finally, armed with a shotgun (not much good against Satan, but I felt better with it) we sent the dog into the apartment first while we waited on the stairs...after a few minutes, I went in....Jenny waited in the doorway...(she was NOT going back in there...considering the "door" we may have opened) while I ran in and grabbed the board and the planchette. We drove 15 miles and dropped the planchette in a dumpster, and 15 more miles before I dropped the board in another dumpster. Both of us still shaking.

I never slept in that apartment again, and won't go up there after dark, to this day. My biggest fear when I'm visiting my parents home, is that I'll move something in the garage or barn, and behind it will be that board.

Wolf892:I was 15 years old and it was the first summer where my parents decided to take a weeklong vacation to visit my grandmother. This was great for me for two reasons, the first, I was allowed to stay home alone for the week, and the second, my mother had left me a 4 gallon tub of bubblegum ice-cream that she had told me to go wild on.I stayed awake every night late, watching Japanese anime, drinking root-beer and eating the heck out of that bubble gum ice cream. I was in 15 year old boy Heaven.On the second to last night of the week everything was going the same. It was three o clock in the morning when I finally finished the last episode of "bubblegum crisis" (which I'd loved watching while eating bubblegum ice-cream) and decided it was time to go downstairs to bed.So I did.I'm not sure what time it was when I woke up, my room was dark, I was laying in bed facing my wall and I could tell that if I didn't get out of bed my bladder was going to burst.As I started to turn over in my bed so that I could climb out, something happened that to this day (34 years old now) I'll never forget.From right beside my head, almost like a breath away from my ear I heard as clear as day a voice. The voice was strange though because it was devoid of all inflection, all tone, all emotion. It only spoke three words to me..."Don't turn around"That was it, nothing more, nothing less. But I didn't question that voice. It was so clear, so close to my head and so flat and inhuman in its substance that held my bladder and did not turn around to get out of bed until I could see the second rays of sunlight peaking through my curtain the next morning.Just... "Don't turn around."

I believe it. Grew up in an old Victorian home and had something similar happen to me, except it asked if I wanted to be a "top dog". Ignored the voice, but tons of weird shiat happened in that house, and many who came over just felt something "bad" there. It was a fixer upper when my parents got it in 1974, and there were pentagrams drawn on the floors. My mother had the house blessed, but it never quite got rid of everything so it appeared. We got broken into several times, and later my uncle came to stay with us. We would leave for church, movies, or whatever, and then he became like a man possessed. Sitting around the house in the dark with a baseball bat hoping to kill anyone that would try to break in. We had to calm him down when we came home. He had the most evil demonic look on his face. To top it off the house was next door to a Pentacostle church and they would be howling in tongues every Sunday and Wednesday. They told me it was the holy spirit grabbing a hold of them, I told them it sounded like something else grabbing them wherever.

/The cholos living across the street later got busted for break-ins in the neighborhood.//We didn't get broken into again while we lived there after that.///We moved to a better neighborhood in 1986 when I was 17

Wolf892:I was 15 years old and it was the first summer where my parents decided to take a weeklong vacation to visit my grandmother. This was great for me for two reasons, the first, I was allowed to stay home alone for the week, and the second, my mother had left me a 4 gallon tub of bubblegum ice-cream that she had told me to go wild on.I stayed awake every night late, watching Japanese anime, drinking root-beer and eating the heck out of that bubble gum ice cream. I was in 15 year old boy Heaven.On the second to last night of the week everything was going the same. It was three o clock in the morning when I finally finished the last episode of "bubblegum crisis" (which I'd loved watching while eating bubblegum ice-cream) and decided it was time to go downstairs to bed.So I did.I'm not sure what time it was when I woke up, my room was dark, I was laying in bed facing my wall and I could tell that if I didn't get out of bed my bladder was going to burst.As I started to turn over in my bed so that I could climb out, something happened that to this day (34 years old now) I'll never forget.From right beside my head, almost like a breath away from my ear I heard as clear as day a voice. The voice was strange though because it was devoid of all inflection, all tone, all emotion. It only spoke three words to me..."Don't turn around"That was it, nothing more, nothing less. But I didn't question that voice. It was so clear, so close to my head and so flat and inhuman in its substance that held my bladder and did not turn around to get out of bed until I could see the second rays of sunlight peaking through my curtain the next morning.Just... "Don't turn around."

Maybe 4 or 5 years ago I had a few episodes over a several month period. Never had it before; ain't had it since. The first time scared the ever-living crap out of me, in the "I'm a seven-year-old trying to scream his fool head off" kind of scared. Only, you can't scream: you're paralyzed.

Apparently, sleep paralysis is when your body decides to wake up your brain without waking up your body. As I understand it, when you sleep, you tend to try to move around a lot, and so your body gets shut down so you don't flail all over the place and injure yourself. Which is great, except for when your body gets things wrong. So you wake up for a few seconds: fully conscious, but completely unable to move. Can't move your arms. Your legs. And your screams (oh, and there will be screams) come out as these pathetic little whines as your vocal chords aren't doing their job either.

And all the things you hear about it are true. You can't move. There is something in the room with you. You can't see it, but you just know it's there. And there isn't a damned thing you can do about it.

Thankfully, it doesn't tend to last long. I guess maybe your body realizes something's wrong and reboots. I dunno.

First time it happened was, to me, the classic 'abduction' scenario. I woke up on my back, and there were these things in the room with me. I couldn't see them, but I knew there were there, watching me dispassionately. I had know idea what was going on, but I was terrified. I tried to scream -- not that anyone would have heard me as I lived alone in a rather secluded area -- but I tried. This pathetically thin, almost wispy whine came out of my mouth and nothing else as I tried in vain to pinpoint what was in my room with me. Next morning, I woke up wondering "WTF?" and, knowing what sleep paralysis was, looked into it more deeply. Didn't happen again for nearly three months.

This time, I knew what was happening, but it was no less scary. Seems the feeling of dread accompanying the episode completely unrelated to the conscious feeling of dread that one might associate with being paralyzed. It's like you're not just falling, but something is also pushing you downward. So there I am, lying on my side, back to the edge of my bed, eyes wide with fright even though I know it's all in my head but still knowing every bit as much that something is behind me, kneeling beside the bed, fingers out-stretched and ever-so almost touching me on my back.

Third time, "there was someone in the house". I knew what was going on (once I realized I couldn't move) but I was still scared shiatless.

For me, it's now like going on a roller-coaster ride that terrifies you and trying to 'just have fun' but only being able to 'enjoy' the scare after the fact, yet you still wanna ride it again.

It all began the same week that my divorce from Deborah became final. She called me and begged that I come to the house we had shared for over a decade. Just a visit, that was all she wanted. I patiently told her again that there was no hope of a reconciliation.

Reconciliation, however, was the furthest thing from her mind. She told me she had uncovered an original draft of The Zanthu Tablets: A Conjectural Translation. I admit this news surprised and intrigued me. My former wife and I were both academics, experts in the fields of archeology and history; but while I made my living from teaching, Deborah had turned her attention to pure research.

Perhaps that was why she had collected accolades while I had collected dalliances with graduate students.

"Who else but you," she had said, "who else but you could appreciate this?"

Curiosity won out over common sense and the next night I took the hour long drive to Arkham. As each mile passed my excitement faded and my dread grew. My parting with Deborah had been angry and tearful. I knew that even now, despite everything, she still loved me. Every relationship is like that in the end, with one party caring for the other more; the worshipper and the worshipped.

I found that both my former home and former wife had suffered a swift decline. The lawn was overgrown, the mail and newspapers unclaimed. Deborah herself looked tired and light-starved. She had gained weight, yet her face had become gaunt.

She had barely shut the door behind me before she began talking franticly, stumbling over her words in an effort to tell me everything at once. I had seen her in such frenzies before, discoveries like this caused her to succumb to a kind of madness. Regardless of such considerations I will admit I was impressed. Her researches into the connections between Sumerian and Polynesian mythology had led her to a new understanding of the disturbing legends of Ythogtha and his offspring Ubb the father of worms. Her work would force the academic world to reconsider everything it knew about the Xothic legend cycle.

Each room of the house was a chaos of old books and hastily scrawled notes. There were maps of the ancient and modern worlds tacked on the walls, patterns had been drawn along and through the oceans and continents.

Instead of leading me to her study she asked me to follow her down to the basement.

A foul odor assaulted me as I descended the stairs. Deborah had somehow managed to tear up the concrete floor of the basement. The soil she had revealed was black and uneven, it reeked of sewage and rot. Before I could question her about this I saw an object sitting alone on a long metal table in the center of the room.

It was the kind of idol that we had both read descriptions of over the years. The kind of idols that missionaries had taken care to destroy. Nothing like this was supposed to have survived into the modern age. I should have been excited but instead I felt a cold dread settle around me. The effigy was no more than a foot tall and made from a yellowish stone that gleamed like it might be exuding some kind of sickly inner moisture. This Plathelminthe-like image could only be that of Ubb, the father of worms.

"Ubb is immortal among his kind," Deborah explained, "raised up by Ythogtha to live and crawl and know. So if he is immortal why were kings and shamans sacrificed to him?"

I backed away from her, afraid of the way her eyes had lit up when she said the word sacrificed. How irrational had she become?

She drew closer to me, reaching out. Her fingertips were darkly stained. "Can't you see? Ubb ingests but does not digest. He is merciful."

Was it my legs quaking beneath me or something more? Even now I cannot say.

"How could you love someone else when I can give you forever?"

My revulsion turned to violence and I pushed her away. She fell backwards into the damp dirt and in doing so revealed what had been carelessly buried there.

I have no memory of fleeing what had once been my home or of screaming in the streets until I fainted dead away.

The rest of my story is public knowledge. The authorities were alerted and a search of the house revealed nearly a dozen bodies. Deborah and the statue were never found, considering her final words to me I am not at all surprised.

In the weeks since I have kept to myself, answering whatever questions the authorities might have and refusing all visitors- reporters and old friends alike. Each night I drink myself to sleep hoping to quell the dreams which now haunt me. Those dreams of a great flatworm-like thing burrowing purposefully through the Earth's mantle and waiting for the stars to be right.

In that dream I am bodiless and weightless, I float close enough to see every detail of its churning body. It glows with an internal bioluminescence. It is blind yet it sees. It is called the father of worms yet it leaves a trail of young in its wake.

The middle of the thing's body is swollen and translucent. I can see the shapes that crowd there, half-mummified and unmistakably human, generations of lords and wise men.

This is Ubb and he sees me. I have been marked. Despite knowing this I do not have the courage to take my own life, to choose oblivion over the fate I know awaits me.

Someday soon the father of worms will reach out and drag me down through miles of Earth to join Deborah and together we will live forever in the belly of the beast.

When it got hot in the valley, Thomas and Alfred drove their cows up to a cool, green pasture in the mountains to graze. Usually they stayed there with the cows for two months. Then they brought them down to the valley again. The work was easy enough, but, oh, it was boring. All day the two men tended their cows. At night they went back to the tiny hut where they lived. They ate supper and worked in the garden and went to sleep. It was always the same.

Then Thomas had an idea that changed everything. "Let's make a doll the size of a man." he said. "It would be fun to make, and we could put it in the garden to scare the birds."

"It should look like Harold," Alfred said. Harold was a farmer they both hated. They made a doll out of old sacks stuffed with straw. They gave it a pointy nose like Harold's and tiny eyes like his. Then they added dark hair and a twisted frown. Of course they also gave it Harold's name.

Each morning on their way to the pasture, they tied Harold to a pole in the garden to scare away the birds. Each night they brought him inside so that he wouldn't get ruined if it rained.

When they were feeling playful, they would talk to him. One of them might say, "How are the vegetables growing today, Harold?" Then the other, making believe he was Harold, would answer in a crazy voice, "Very slowly." They both would laugh, but not Harold.

Whenever something went wrong, they took it out on Harold. They would curse at him, even kick or punch him. Sometimes one of them would take the food they were eating (which they both were sick of) and smear it on the doll's face. "How do you like that stew, Harold?" he would ask. "Well, you better eat it - or else." Then the two men would howl with laughter.

"It was Harold," Thomas said. "I was watching him when it happened. I can't believe it."

"How could he grunt?" Alfred asked, "He's just a sack of straw. It's not possible."

"Let's throw him in the fire," Thomas said, "and that will be that."

"Let's not do anything stupid," said Alfred. "We don't know what's going on. When we move the cows down, we'll leave him behind. For now, let's just keep an eye on him."

So they left Harold sitting in the corner of the hut. They didn't talk to him or take him outside anymore. Now and then the doll grunted, but that was all. After a few days, they decided there was nothing to be afraid of. Maybe a mouse or some insects had gotten inside Harold and were making those sounds.

So Thomas and Alfred went back to their old ways. Each morning they put Harold out in the garden, and each night they brought him back into the hut. When they felt playful, they joked with him. When they felt mean, they treated him as badly as ever.

Then one night Alfred noticed something that frightened him. "Harold is growing," he said.

"I was thinking the same thing." Thomas said.

"Maybe it's just our imagination," Alfred replied. "We have been up here on this mountain for too long."

The Next morning, while they were eating, Harold stood up and walked out of the hut. He climbed up on the roof and trotted back and forth, like a horse on its hind legs. All day and all night, he trotted like that. In the morning Harold climbed down and stood in a far corner of the pasture. The men had no idea what he would do next. They were afraid.

They decided to take the cows down into the valley that same day. When they left, Harold was nowhere in sight. They felt as if they had escaped a great danger and began joking and singing. But when they had gone only a mile or two, they realized they had forgotten to bring the milking stools.

Neither one wanted to go back for them, but the stools would cost a lot to replace. "There really is nothing to be afraid of," they told one another. "After all, what could a doll do?"

They drew straws to see which one would go back. It was Thomas. "I'll catch up with you." he said, and Alfred walked toward the valley.

When Alfred came to a rise in the path, he looked back for Thomas. He did not see him anywhere. But he did see Harold. The doll was on the roof of the hut again. As Alfred watched, Harold kneeled and stretched out a bloody skin to dry in the sun.